Pictures on Loan

The Trustees of The Faringdon Collection are sometimes asked to lend works of art to national and international exhibitions. However, the Trustees are reluctant to loan items from the Collection when Buscot Park is open to visitors. Very occasionally an exception may be made because of the importance of a particular exhibition.

Unusually, for 2012, there will be two paintings absent from the Collection. Firstly, "The Head of a Girl" by Sebastiano del Piombo (No.48), will be away from Buscot for six months, and exhibited at The National Gallery, London, as part of their exhibition, "Titian's First Masterpiece: The Flight into Egypt and its Context". This will be held in the Sunley Room from 4th April to 2nd September 2012, and the painting will then return to Buscot for the second half of September.

"The Flight into Egypt" is generally agreed to be one of Titian's earliest works, probably painted when he was still a teenager. The first large-format picture of this subject in Italian art, it is an extraordinarily ambitious and original painting for such a young artist. The choice of this particular subject allowed Titian to display his precocious skills in landscape painting; in the picture, landscape occupies most of the composition, and the viewer's eye is attracted not only by the bold handling and exciting colour but by the numerous paintings of animals.

The display will be supplemented by works from the National Gallery's permanent collection and a few carefully selected loans to illustrate how the young Titian's first great masterpiece was influenced by the work of other artists working in Venice, including Albrecht Dürer and Sebastiano del Piombo. Venetian patronage of the period will also be explored. The Gallery's collection is particularly rich in important early works by Titian and the exhibition will examine his earliest masterpieces in portraiture, including his "Man with the Blue Sleeve", next to this earliest landscape masterpiece, all having been generated by the same stimulating and cosmopolitan cultural environment.

The exhibition will be curated for the National Gallery by Antonio Mazzotta, whose important new research will appear in a special issue of the Burlington Magazine to be published to coincide with the exhibition. This issue will also contain a complete account of the Hermitage painting by Irina Artemieva, a leading scholar of Venetian art.

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Also, for 2012/13 one of the more significant pictures in the Collection, "The Triumph of the Eucharist" by Murillo (No.70), will be away from Buscot for eighteen months. The Trustees have agreed to lend this picture to a major exhibition on Murillo and his patron, Justino de Neve. The picture will return to Buscot in late May 2013.

The Trustees of the Dulwich Picture Gallery have kindly lent one of their paintings, "The Creation of Eve" by Nuvolone, to fill the space on the wall (see 'Faringdon Collection Paintings' No.DPG235).

The exhibition is entitled "Murillo and Justino de Neve", and will run from June 2012 to May 2013 at the following venues:

Museo del Prado, Madrid: 26th June - 30th September 2012

Fundación Focus-Abengoa, Sevilla - 11th October 2012 - 20th January 2013

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London: 6th February - 12th May 2013

"The Triumph of the Eucharist" formed part of the quartet of pictures that Murillo painted for the Sevillian church of Santa María la Blanca in 1665 and shows the artist at his most dynamic and inventive. The pair to this painting is the "Triumph of the Immaculate Conception" in the Louvre. Murillo painted two other large lunettes for this church, "The Dream of the Patrician" and "The Patrician revealing his Dream to Pope Liberius", both of which are in the Prado, and will be especially restored for the exhibition. Furthermore, two paintings by Murillo from the London National Gallery, and the Lane Collection (on loan to the Birmingham Art Gallery) which formed part of the temporary altar erected outside the church in 1665 for the opening celebration are hoped to be included in the exhibition.

Don Justino de Neve (1625-1685) was a Canon of Seville Cathedral and obtained for Murillo some of his most important ecclesiastical commissions, among them, the decoration of the church of Santa María la Blanca, the Chapter House of the Cathedral, and the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes. Don Justino was also responsible for encouraging Murillo to paint some of his most original works for his own collection, which at his death included nineteen paintings by the artist. The exhibition aims to throw light on this fertile artistic friendship, and at the same time to show a selection of late paintings by Murillo, works of extraordinary beauty, both ambitious and personal in nature, painted when he was at the height of his artistic maturity and fame.

The exhibition will take place in the Prado, then in the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes, the institution founded by Justino de Neve for retired priests of the dioces of Seville, today the home of the Fundación Focus-Abengoa and the Centro Velázquez, and finally in the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, whose collection includes some of Murillo's finest works, including one which belonged to Don Justino, the "Flower Girl". It is the intention of the exhibition to bring together all the works that arose from the relationship between the painter and the canon, and several of them will be restored in preparation for their display.